Book Review: Sex, Sushi, and Salvation

The good folks at Moody Publishers recently sent me a copy of Sex, Sushi, and Salvation, a new book by Christian George. We’ve done book reviews before here at ITA, but I’ve never been been solicited to do one. I feel a bit like Tim Challies.
There’s a minor genre these days of 20-something authors writing to their peers and trying to illustrate truths through autobiography. The most prominent examples from within the Christian framework are Lauren F. Winner and Donald Miller (Blue Like Jazz). 26-year-old Christian George joins the fray with his third(!) book, Sex, Sushi, and Salvation.
The subtitle of the book is “thoughts on intimacy, community, and eternity.” George’s thesis is that all humankind has an innate desire for those three things, and that ultimately those desires can only be fulfilled perfectly by God Himself. It’s not a thesis that George rides hard though, trying to shoehorn every idea into one of those three points. In fact, Sex, Sushi, and Salvation meanders gently between personal anecdotes and larger theological arguments–lingering more on the later–and it’s these theological sections that set the book apart from others in the genre. Christian George is the son of respected evangelical scholar Timothy George and a rising PhD candidate in theology himself, and in his book he demonstrates a strong knowledge of the Bible and a grounding in Christian thought (C.S. Lewis, Thomas Merton, Saint Francis of Assisi, Charles Wesley, and various Reformed heroes make appearances). This keeps him anchored on firmer theological ground than say, Donald Miller (though I’m a fan of Miller as well). George uses his knowledge to greatest effect when he’s prophetically pushing the church to spit out “cotton-candy” theology that doesn’t challenge anybody and makes promises more in line with the American dream than with anything put forth by Christ. “There’s more to life than computerized slippers and sexy ring tones,” he says, as he challenges his readers to look for a more honest, authentic, and potentially dangerous, faith.
This being an autobiography, the book also has a few memorable anecdotes as well. My personal favorite was when young Christian and a high school buddy were kicked out of a Pentecostal prosperity gospel church for refusing to speak in tongues on demand (”you must have unconfessed sin in your lives!” they were told). George uses this as the jumping off point for his dissection of the American dream church. There’s also a sad (and a little creepy) story of a pet hamster “Fluffy” that starts the discussion of human depravity and suffering. Frequently, George will use memories of international travels with his scholar-missionary father to link to related biblical events.
Christian George’s prose is smooth and refined, though occasionally over-written. I think if you’re within this book’s demographic–that is, the author’s generation–it’s a decent addition to a library.